Critic's Notebook

Critic's Notebook: Joe Swanberg's New Star-Studded Project Proves No Microbudget Filmmaker Wants to Stay That Way Forever

I have a theory: Joe Swanberg is fucking with us.

Critic's Notebook: From 'The Dark Knight' to 'The Imposter,' New Releases Suggest a Post-Spoilers Future at the Movies

Critic's Notebook: From 'Battleship' to 'G.I. Joe,' Hasbro Continues to Dominate Hollywood. Will Better Movies Ever Make a Comeback?

Toy and game manufacturer Hasbro has become a major Hollywood player. Hasbro. You may have thought at one point or another that the Hollywood bar couldn’t get any lower. Then this.

Critic's Notebook: Has Pixar Gone the Way of 'The Simpsons'?

Critic's Notebook: Ray Bradbury Died When the Movies Needed Him the Most

Bradbury's enchanting prose put emotions ahead of plot specifics while still moving forward at a thundering pace.

Critic's Notebook: Deleting 'The Avengers' and Other Misadventures From the Digital Frontier

Journalists get used to perks, avoiding long lines chief among them. However, when a New York press screening for "The Avengers" ran into a technical snafu last week, we had no choice but to wait...

Critic's Notebook: Does 'The Avengers' Belong at the Tribeca Film Festival?

"The Avengers" will play like gangbusters at the closing night of the Tribeca Film Festival this Saturday. This is less prediction than absolute certainty. But does it belong there?

Critic's Notebook: Is the American Indie Film Extinct?

The film is about a traveler in a foreign land, stationed there for work; while on assignment, he falls in love with a native, even though the foreigner is due to return home soon. The film, made with a complicated formalist approach and focused on the foreigner's attempts to understand this new...

Critic's Notebook: Why Whit Stillman, not 'Titanic,' Defines the '90s

The nineties are back! That's the general takeaway from a crop of trend pieces responding to two new releases this week, one that piggybacks on the popularity of a late nineties hit and another that is one. As all sentient beings know by now, James Cameron's "Titanic" reemerge...